El Niño News

What to Know About El Nino, La Nina

If you have never heard the term “El Nino,” you might have been living under a rock. The common informed person is probably somewhat aware that we are amidst a record-setting El Nino, and rumors of a possible switch to …

January Weather Cost Global Economy $4 Billion-Plus: Impact Forecasting

January winter weather cost more than $4.0 billion of economic impact in the United States and Asia, according to Impact Forecasting, Aon Benfield’s catastrophe model development team, which evaluates the impact of natural disasters on a monthly basis. During the …

El Niño Could Signal Easing of California Drought, Says Official

In the strongest indication yet that the California drought could be easing, officials said strict water conservation orders could be dramatically scaled back or even ended if El Niño storms keep pummeling the state into the spring. The assessment came …

Record Western Wildfires a Contrast in Otherwise Quiet Year for U.S. Natural Disasters

It was a relatively quiet year for natural disasters – except for those living in the Western U.S. Property data provider CoreLogic today released its annual Natural Hazard Risk Summary and Analysis. The report shows “a continued trend of fewer …

Group Asking Residents Use Drones to Map El Niño Flooding in California

Forget about selfies. In California, residents are using smartphones and drones to document the coastline’s changing face. Starting this month, The Nature Conservancy is asking tech junkies to capture the flooding and coastal erosion that come with El Niño, a …

Weather Service: Tornado Hit Southern California in Last Week’s El Niño Storms

The National Weather Service says a small tornado touched down in Ventura County, Calif. during last week’s powerful El Niño-driven storms. Meteorologists conducting a storms survey determined the tornado swept through a half-mile swath of Fillmore during the morning of …

Insured Nat Cat Losses 31% Below Average During 2015: Aon Benfield Report

Global natural disasters in 2015 caused a combined total insured loss of $35 billion – 31 percent below the 15-year average of $51 billion and the lowest annual insured loss total since 2009, said a report issued by Impact Forecasting, …

Weather Forecaster Warns La Niña Could Follow on Heels of El Niño

The El Niño that disrupted weather worldwide last year has peaked. Now forecasters are predicting what may be next for the world’s climate. A number of El Niño-Southern Oscillation indicators suggest that the 2015-16 El Niño has peaked and weather …

El Niño Helped Reduce Natural Catastrophe Losses in 2015: Munich Re

Insurers paid out around $27 billion for natural disaster claims last year with weather causing 94 percent of incidents, underscoring the challenge posed by climate change, data from reinsurer Munich Re showed on Monday. While the climate phenomenon known as …

Ridesharing Dominates 2016 Western Region Headlines

Goodbye to the news year 2015, and while there will be no shortage of headline-making topics to associate with the passing year, there was one subject that dominated Insurance Journal’s Western region news stories. Care to guess? No if fair …